Rapper The Game made news this week for all of the right reasons: together with fellow rapper, Drake, he donated $20,000 to help Anna Angel to cover the funeral costs for her boyfriend and children. Angel lost everything she had except for the Burger King outfit she was wearing when a fire broke out at her mobile home, killing all of her children while she was at work.

It turns out that this isn't The Game's only instance of generosity this month. The Game donated $10,000 to help with the funeral of Tiana Ricks, a six-year-old girl shot outside her home on September 7, 2013, in Moreno Valley, California, in what was later deemed a gang-related crime.

In fact, the rapper, best known for his hard-hitting image, has been showing a lot of heart recently. He has pledged to give $1,000,000 to people all over the world "just because I feel like it." He's chronicling his gifts via Instagram with the Robin Hood Project, launched just three weeks ago.

The 33 year old rapper, whose real name is Jayceon Terrell Taylor, started making waves on the rap scene in 2003 when he was signed by the iconic Dr. Dre (#3 on Forbes' list of HipHop's Wealthiest Artists 2013). His debut album, "The Documentary," featuring Dr. Dre and 50 Cent as executive producers, was a hit in 2005, garnering two Grammy nods and was certified double platinum.

Before making it in the music world, The Game was a name on the streets of Compton. He became a member of the Bloods street gang and regularly sold drugs. In 2001, as part of a drug-related altercation, The Game was shot five times and ended up in a coma. As he recovered, The Game spent hours listening to classic rap albums and decided to become a rapper.

The Game capitalized on his gang background, feuding publicly with such big names as Suge Knight and 50 Cent. Both feuds took violent turns and while The Game avoided charges in those feuds, they did establish him as something of a wild card.

As he became more popular, he tried his hand in areas outside of music. He appeared on TV (including on the popular reality show Marrying the Game) and in movies, as well as voicing character in popular video games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. He did not, however, settle down. With mo' money came mo' problems: the Game found himself involved in numerous legal and criminal incidents throughout his rap career, including a felony weapons charge in 2007 and a criminal investigation after Twitter joke gone bad in 2011 involving the Los Angeles Police Department.

It's not necessarily the resume that you'd expect to see from a philanthropist - but that's exactly who The Game is becoming.

This newfound passion for giving ordinary folks cash just because he wants to may be noble but it's not deductible. The Internal Revenue Service only allows a charitable deduction for contributions to qualified organizations. In both of the cases this month (Angel and Ricks), the money went to the individuals. And no matter how tragic a story a person might have, the IRS specifically disqualifies contributions to specific individuals, including the following:

Contributions to individuals who are needy or worthy. You cannot deduct these contributions even if you make them to a qualified organization for the benefit of a specific person. But you can deduct a contribution to a qualified organization that helps needy or worthy individuals if you do not indicate that your contribution is for a specific person.

As long as The Game keeps writing those checks - or from the looks of these pictures, handing out cash - to specific individuals, he is not entitled to a tax deduction. It's simply not a qualified charitable donation.

But does that mean that the recipients have a tax problem? Not at all. There is no federal income tax due on these donations: they are gifts. There’s no consideration given in return, no services rendered, no products being touted. The IRS defines a gift as "any transfer to an individual, either directly or indirectly, where full consideration (measured in money or money’s worth) is not received in return." In the business, we like to say that gifts are given not for anything in return but out of "love, affection, respect or admiration." No matter how you define it, it's not taxable to the recipients as income.

There is, however, one tricky consideration here: gifts are subject to the federal gift tax rules. And under the federal gift tax rules, the person who makes the gift (not the recipient) is responsible for the gift tax. In this case, that would be The Game.

Under the current rules, you can give up to $14,000 per person, per year, without being subject to federal gift tax. That means The Game is off the hook for his gifts to the Ricks family - it was only $10,000 - and possibly for his gifts to the Angel family - assuming he split the $20,000 gift evenly with Drake.

What about those other gifts, those small amounts of $50 here and $100 there? They all qualify for the exclusion - again, it's a per person exclusion, so The Game, as the taxpayer, can give away the $1,000,000 he's pledged in small increments without ever being subject to federal gift tax. But the second he gives someone $15,000 instead of $14,000, he's subject to reporting the gift for gift tax purposes. And it doesn't have to be all at once. Remember, it's per year: he can make a $10,000 gift in September and a $5,000 gift in December and if it's to the same person, he is over the limit.

Considering how long he's been in the spotlight, chances are that the rapper has a set of financial and tax people advising him about these kinds of details. With an estimated worth of $20 million, these very public gifts are being scrutinized not only by the media and his fans, but by his tax professionals and likely the IRS.

No matter what the tax consequences of his generosity, The Game definitely seems to enjoy being able to give his money away. And the decision to gift his money away to those who might need it - instead of blatantly flaunting his wealth a la Scott Disick - has many thinking that maybe he's a good guy after all. The Game, however, doesn't want folks to go too far down that road, saying, "I'm The Game! I'm dangerous!" He acknowledges, however, that "doing all of these acts has brought a tremendous amount of positivity to my life. I'm still who I am at the core, but I have a heart."